Monday, November 9, 2015

So there’s this bird in a cage, a
beautifully made, realistically nature-like, expensive cage. It’s grand and
spacious, but not quite large enough for her to fly around in and completely
stretch out her wings. She has plenty of fresh water and delicious foods to
eat. She’s got toys, plants, stunning living flowers, swings, and everything she
needs to live a great life. It looks like a pretty perfect life. She sings
gorgeously conducted haunting melodies and smiles every time someone passes by.
From a distance, she looks happy and mighty content.

The problem is that she’s really
not happy, nor content. If someone really took the time to look closely and
thoroughly enough, they’d see this sorrow in her eyes. They’d see the build-up
of a lifetime of pain and brokenness, hopelessness, and desperation. They'd see she's insufferably lonely, and so gravely depressed. Her cage is
fantastic and can sustain her throughout her whole life in a more than
comfortable manor, and she’d live well. So what’s her problem? She doesn’t
really have anything to be sad about. What on earth could be wrong?

Well, she can see clearly outside
the window by which her cage sits. She can’t see the whole world, but she can
see other birds flying free. She watches with envy as they soar through air,
flying from tree to tree, landing confidently on branches that comfortably
support their delicate little bodies. Oh, how she wishes to be free. How she
yearns to know what truly flying feels like. So day after day, all she can do
is stare grimly out the window and watch those who are free do everything that
she can’t.

Then one day she sees smoke
writhing and inching its way towards her. Within seconds she hears the roaring
crackle of flames that are engulfing the walls on the other side of the room.
Her heart is aflutter! She feels fear like she’s never felt before. She is
trapped inside of this beautiful cage with her world burning down around her.
As the flames slowly get closer she feels more and more terror. The smoke is so
thick now she can hardly see out the window, or even through the bars of her
cage. Her lungs are heavy and burning with the thick, black smoke. She feels pain so horrifying that she cannot define it. Her mind is
racing in every which way, but she cannot stop the tumultuous rollercoaster on
a single thought. She’s frozen. Stupefied.
Conclusively crippled. She can see the brightly colored ominous flames growing
in size in a slothful, indolent motion. And all she can do is remain paralyzed
in an inexplicable fear watching them idly creep towards her.

She turns her back to the flames,
and stares vacantly through the inconsistently swaying smoke. As it dances
around, almost ceremoniously, she gets brief glimpses of the world outside her
window and of the birds who fly so freely. They look so lovely… so happy… so
peaceful… and so free. Oh how she yearns to know how that peace feels. And
freedom. What she would give to feel the refreshing bliss of real freedom and instead of the weight of her prison pressing down on her. What is she to do? Where is her master, her
teacher? The one who taught her to sing? The one who cared so much to give her
this beautiful life? She feels so utterly abandoned and trapped inside this
prison. If only she could get beyond her cage. If she could just find a way
out, all her troubles would be just a memory.

Still paralyzed in her fear, she
ponders the many things in this life she never did, and will never do. She can
feel the icy hand of Death, the barbarously callous entity that is physically
extracting her very breath. He whispers softly that he can make it all better.
He can take her misery away. He can save her from this life. She trusts Him, and slowly lets
go. Her life force listlessly fading. She suddenly feels herself outside of
her body, outside of her cage, like a gaper who is nonchalantly watching her
very own life diminish. She can see her light fading, growing dimmer, being
snuffed. But she can’t do a damn thing to stop it. She can feel Death’s grip on
her, clenching tighter with each throb of her heart, hell bent on not letting
her go.

As her breath escapes her tiny,
weakened frame for the last time, her thrashing panicked heart slows to a stand
still, faintly letting out one last beat. Her mind races no more. Her fear has overtaken her. Forsaken her. Death
releases His appallingly deceptive grip on her as her tiny body falls down to
the bottom of the cage, where the door lay opened. Her Master’s hand awaited on
the other side of the door for her to meet Him. But she was so caught up in her fear and watching the world outside her window that she couldn’t look around and see the one
thing she wanted and needed most: His outstretched hand.

Thomas said to Him, "Lord, we do not know where You are
going, how do we know the way?" Jesus said to him,
"I AM the way, the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but
through Me."